Thursday, March 20, 2014

The President Of All The Russias Speaks

Before he signed a
measure incorporating the Crimea into the Russian Federation, Vladimir
Putin gave a speech (official
English translation). The speech lays out his justification for annexing
Crimea and lists a number of grievances and a few promises. It is shot through
with misstatements of fact. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler,
gives the factual content of the speech four
pinocchios, indicating a high degree of inaccuracy. I can find a number of
other inaccuracies, but that is not my focus. Links at the beginning of quotes
should take you to that part of the speech.

He addressed the situation of the Crimean Tatars, but then
claims that in Russia, “not
a single ethnic group has been lost over the centuries.” That was not for
lack of the Kremlin’s trying. The Tatars were not the only ethnic group exiled
and killed. The Circassians tried
to get their story out to the world during the Sochi Olympics. And there
are others. Perhaps Russia has recovered from Stalin’s penchant for genocide
and will treat the remaining Crimean Tatars more decently. However, Putin tells us, the
Russians suffered more.

Putin’s historical argument, combined with the way he
regards “Russians,” has led to wars throughout history. The way he speaks about “Russians” is
instructive. He starts by separating “Russian citizens” and “Russian speakers,”

However, we expected
Ukraine to remain our good neighbour, we hoped that Russian citizens and
Russian speakers in Ukraine, especially its southeast and Crimea, would live in
a friendly, democratic and civilised state...

but then goes on to conflate the two as “Russians.” The term
“Russian speakers” appears only one other time in the speech. Before that,
however, he mentioned “the Russian nation” broadly:

Millions of people
went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming
ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became
one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided
by borders.

Millions of Russians
and Russian-speaking people live in Ukraine and will continue to do so. Russia
will always defend their interests using political, diplomatic and legal
means.

Other mentions of “Russians:”

Time and time again
attempts were made to deprive Russians of their historical memory, even of
their language and to subject them to forced assimilation. Moreover, Russians,
just as other citizens of Ukraine are suffering from the constant political and
state crisis that has been rocking the country for over 20 years.

After all, they [“our
western partners”] were fully aware that there are millions of Russians living
in Ukraine and in Crimea. They must have really lacked political instinct and
common sense not to foresee all the consequences of their actions. Russia found
itself in a position it could not retreat from. If you compress the spring all
the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. You must always remember this.

Our nation,
however, unequivocally supported the sincere, unstoppable desire of the Germans
for national unity. I am confident that you have not forgotten this, and I
expect that the citizens of Germany will also support the aspiration of the
Russians, of historical Russia, to restore unity.

Here Putin is referring to the unification of Germany after
the fall of the Soviet Union, but the context of “historical Russia” and
“Russians” echoes another part of Germany’s history, expansionism in the name
of protecting its “nationals.”

The most recent
public opinion surveys conducted here in Russia show that 95 percent of people
think that Russia should protect the interests of Russians and members of other
ethnic groups living in Crimea – 95 percent of our citizens.

This conflating of “the Russian nation,” Russian citizens,
and Russian speakers potentially is a justification for intervention in many
nations. The excuse of protecting one’s own “nationals” has been used to
justify many wars. Moscow is
now claiming interest in the welfare of Russian-speakers in Estonia. For a
long period during the 1990s, public opinion polls in Russia showed that
Russians felt the country that posed the greatest threat to Russian security
was Estonia. All 1.3 million residents.

Grievances

The speech is full of bitterness against wrongdoers who
Putin feels have damaged Russia. Here is a sample. I had hoped to find a
coherent list of specifics, but much of the bitterness is expressed in
generalities.

After the revolution,
the Bolsheviks, for a number of reasons – may God judge them – added large
sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine.

Then, in 1954, a
decision was made to transfer Crimean Region to Ukraine, along with Sevastopol,
despite the fact that it was a federal city. [He goes on to say that this was
unconstitutional. Kessler finds that incorrect.]

Now, many years later,
I heard residents of Crimea say that back in 1991 they were handed over like a
sack of potatoes. [see Kessler.]

Time and time again
attempts were made to deprive Russians [in Ukraine] of their historical memory,
even of their language and to subject them to forced assimilation.

Nationalists,
neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites executed this coup. They continue to
set the tone in Ukraine to this day. [see Kessler.]

Like a mirror, the
situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in
the world over the past several decades. After the dissolutionof
bipolarity on the planet, we no longer have stability. Key international
institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they
are sadly degrading. Our western partners, led by the United States of America,
prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but
by the rule of the gun.

He also blames the breakup of Yugoslavia and other events,
including the Arab Spring (“turned into the Arab Winter”) on the United States.

We understand what is
happening; we understand that these actions were aimed against Ukraine and
Russia and against Eurasian integration.

Putin makes a number of promises in the speech, including
the generalities one might expect in a speech like this. I have collected the
more specific ones here. One measure of his sincerity is to keep track of how
many are fulfilled.

I believe we should
make all the necessary political and legislative decisions to finalise the
rehabilitation of Crimean Tatars, restore them in their rights and clear their
good name. [This
report came through as I was writing. Only took a single day to destroy this
promise.]

…it would be right –
I know the local population supports this – for Crimea to have three equal
national languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar.

Putin is bitter that the Soviet Union ended. It was not the
west that brought it down, but Soviet Communism’s inherent contradictions. The
conquest of territory by force is a major break with Russian behavior over the
past quarter-century, although it has historical resonances with earlier
periods of history.

1 comment:

So glad you caught the part about the Taters being relocated. As best I can figure the man is psychotic. All the while the current events in Crimea were going on Exxon was penning a deal with Rosneft Russia's largest energy company. So keep an eye out should sanctions be placed on oil and gas production.